After the Amp Up Earth Day Summit,
on March 26th, the next time the network came back together was on April 25th for the trip to DC, the Climate Rally. The rally was extremely tame, a festival really, with a couple hundred thousand people supporting a mission to get the Climate Bill passed. Many Environmental groups, perhaps entirely Environmental Justice groups didn't support the bill at all because it didn't address co-pollutants or other unjust extraction measures, nor did it show any concern for the People most affected by these Climate Changes. This week that bill has died and so whether you were so against Carbon Trading or you supported it because it was better than nothing, it doesn't matter, because starting this week we are all in the same boat. Before Amp Up folks got involved in Hydrofracking, there were lobbyists fighting for a moratorium, there were radical groups fighting for a ban only, there were various grassroots groups upstate, and there was Earth First! On the same day that frackaction.com was launched, some of us went to an Earth First! gathering in Ithaca where the subject was Fracking. Not everyone there was a tree-sitting, civilly disobeying, Earth Firster, but just concerned youth. This is how Julia Walsh organized the June 15th DEC actions, by introducing this strategy to the gathering of more than 50 people.
Those two weeks were incredibly busy, with statewide conference calls putting the six rallies together, meetings in Washington Square Park and the Alignment Center where new people joined. It is notable that friends from the gathering, one who I may reveal, Claire Sandberg (who has kept a very professional blog of Frack Action events on the website), let us turn their Brooklyn apartment into an office. We worked with other groups, lobbied and went to other press conferences and rallies before and after June 15th. A week after the DEC actions many of us went to the US Social Forum and met other folks working on it, including Energy Justice and just some independent concerned youth from Pennsylvania. On July 13th we rallied at Sampson's office in Canarsie with Move On and hit up the boulevard. On July 14th, I made a Face Book event called Shannon's Birthday Environmental Protest! which spread the word, but I can't say it brought out many youth. It was a huge hearing with 200 Anti-Frackers and 200 Pro, all in one room, Jox Fox was there and it may have determined the fate of the Delaware River. On July 20th we held a Frack Action press conference in Albany with Pete Seeger, who sang two songs, and Mark Ruffalo, a famous actor from Upstate New York. Now the moratorium bill is in a new session in the senate and may or may not pass. If it fails to pass, the gas companies may start fracking in NY as early as August or September. With different variables then, our strategy will have to adapt. 
We are debating whether to have a Water Party of some sort to bring back Amp Up and address Water in general in August and we are setting a date and place for a 10/10/10 Brainstorming Forum. Here are some things to know. On July 30th folks are going to boycott Arizona at Citifield when the Diamondbacks show. On August 12th, there is a Fracking hearing/protest in Binghamton. On August 31st there is a Gasland related concert at Mercury Lounge on Houston. On September 25th there is Appalachia Rising, a Mountain Top Removal event in DC.
October 7th, is the National Strike to Defend Education, which is a sequel to the actions, which took place on March 4. On that day, student groups were free organize in their own way, from marching to rallying, striking, occupying, to having concerts. This year is a unified strike, so everyone involved is cutting class it seems. On October 1st there is a Marcellus Shale Gas Summit in Pittsburg. October 10th is 350.org's 10/10/10 Global Work Day. This is a day to bring folks together to make the community or campus more sustainable, to record it amongst the thousands of other projects that day. "We're doing our part, now they have to do theirs,' is the motto of that day. Please comment if there is more you know of. We know that probably in January the new Power Shift New York will hold a conference and maybe an action as well, probably here in New York City. A comrade, Chris Williams, a professor at Pace and a member of the ISO (International Socialist Organization), also writer of Ecology and Socialism has been stimulating a lot of ecological thought within that activist community, which could be a very significant thing considering their role in the LGBT Equality March, because he has been proposing the idea of a March now, for Climate. This is something that I wrote after the Climate Rally has been impossible because of ideological fragmentation within the Environmental Movement, but now that the bill is dead, we are all together. Since the bill didn't even pass, and with the Gulf and other leak in China in the general consciousness, now is definitely time to think of a March, but we have to first consider the momentum that these other events, especially 10/10/10 contribute to that one action. 
Additionally, as Julia Walsh mentioned at the Youth meet-up at the Climate Rally and as Whit Jones, who was amongst us there, addressed in an EAC, (Energy Action Coalition) blast today, we have to turn to local activism as well. We have to organize around our state and county legislators because it's just not happening federally and we can bring more people to local events, we can put people we know in local office, we can change things locally, at our campuses, in our neighborhoods, in our selves even, but always at our local legislatures.Amp Up needs a new website, it needs to have regular "collective" meetings, (council collective, events collective and communications collective). We don't want people to join Amp Up. We want people to join local groups, or create their own. As Chris Williams said at a recent ISO meeting about BP, "Be active, but in an organized way." Amp Up will be there to create space and discussions where all those groups can come together and discuss agreements and disagreements, to unify, to learn more about what's going on within the whole spectrum of Youth activism, within the Greater New York City Area and globally, to get a variety of views and updates, and we will be there to provide organizing skills, stimulate cultural electricity, to make your voices heard, and to Amp Up this movement.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=115772651772988&ref=ts (Amp Up)
www.frackaction.com
www.350.org
